


Waiting In The Sky

by loopyhoopyfrood



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Afterlife, Canonical Character Death, Light Angst, M/M, does it count if they're already dead?, shows up three years late with fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 20:04:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17066216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loopyhoopyfrood/pseuds/loopyhoopyfrood
Summary: When Philip wakes, there's a man waiting in the sky for him.





	Waiting In The Sky

When Philip wakes, there's a man waiting in the sky for him.

"Hey." The man says, and if Philip believed in angels he thinks they'd sound a little like that, "Hey. It's okay. Take it slow."

Slow has never been in Philip's vocabulary, but the pounding in his arm and in his ribs and in his head is leaving him with little other choice. He swallows, but his throat is drier than one of Jefferson's speeches.

"Am I-" He manages, and although his eyes refuse to stay open he thinks he sees the blurry figure smile sadly.

"Yes." The maybe-angel says. "I'm sorry."

"I-" Philip whimpers, forcing the words out past the rawness of his throat, "I was aiming for the sky. I was aiming..."

Then, Philip hadn't cried. There hadn't been time; too focused on staying strong for his father, on singing for his mother. And so he'd sung, and spoken his final words, and clutched at his parents' hands as if they could tether him to life, but not once had he cried.

He cries now.

"Hey." Says the man, and there's a hand stroking Philip's hair in a way so reminiscent of his mother that it makes him cry all the harder, "Hey. It's okay. Let it out, kid."

Philip does.

"I should have shot him." He says, once all his tears are exhausted.

"I should have shot him." He says again, but even as he does he knows he doesn't believe his own words. He tries anyway.

"If I'd shot him-"

"No."

Philip looks up at the man looking down at him, and there's something in his gaze that makes him think that maybe it's okay if the thought of shooting Eacker makes him want to vomit.

"Taking someone's life isn't a thing that should be taken lightly." The man says, "You fought with honour, and there's no shame in that."

"You sound like my pops." Says Philip, smiling a smile that's tainted with lingering guilt. The smile he gets in return is tainted too, but with something Philip finds he can't quite decipher.

"Your pops was a smart man."

"You knew him?"

"I did." The man says, "We fought together, in the war."

There's a hesitancy to the man's words, as if there were something else he wanted to say instead. Philip watches the man, wondering if maybe silence will encourage him to continue, but the more he looks at the man's freckled face and the curls that fight to escape his ponytail the more familiar he seems. 

"Wait," Philip says, struck with a sudden thought, "Are you John Laurens?"

The man, Laurens, starts, surprised.

"You've heard of me?"

"You're kidding, right?" Philip grins, "My pops talked about you all the time!"

"He did?"

"Yeah." Philip says, too caught up in his excitement to notice the tear that Laurens quickly wipes from his eye. "He said you were a hero."

"Alexander was always prone to over-exaggeration." Says Laurens, but he can't help the blush that spreads across his cheeks, nor the fondness that colours his smile.

"Can I ask you something?" Philip says, after a moment.

"Of course."

"Did you really shoot Charles Lee?"

Laurens laughs suddenly, and in that moment Philip thinks he understands why his father told so many stories about him. It was the sort of laugh that lit up a room, banishing any lingering fears and making anyone in earshot unable to do anything but smile in response.

The sort of laugh that made being dead seem not all that bad.

"What can I say?" Laurens asks when he's done laughing, "I was young."

"So was I."

Philip means it as a joke, but before he's even reached the end of his sentence he feels the truth of it hit him even harder than the bullet that sent him here. He forces himself to breathe, and in his desperation to change the topic grasps hold of the first thought to drift through his mind.

"My father loved you."

"I know." Laurens smiles, "I will always be proud to have been considered his friend."

"No." Philip's shaking his head before Laurens has even finished speaking. That's not what he means, and he needs Laurens to understand.

"He loved you. Like he loves my mother. He never said, not properly, but I could see it in his eyes whenever he mentioned you. It was different, to when he mentioned the others, and I think..." Philips pauses, hesitant, but the words seem less scandalous when there's no one around to be scandalised, "He was in love with you."

"I know." Laurens says again, and as Philip looks into his eyes he realises he really does. "I was in love with him too. It was impossible not to be."

"Did he know? That you loved him?"

"Yeah."

Laurens is smiling, and there's a certainty to his voice that makes Philip pause. There are so many more questions he could ask, but there's only so much detail he thinks he could take. It is his father they're talking about after all, and as he looks into Laurens' eyes he knows that the only question of importance has already been answered.

"I bet you've got some good stories." He says instead, "About my pops."

"Don't I just." Laurens grins, "He's probably told you them all already though."

"I wouldn't mind hearing them again." Philip crosses his legs, leaning back on his hands, "Besides, like you said, pops exaggerates."

"And you think I don't?" Teases Laurens, but he doesn't even try to hide his eagerness. He looks at Philip the way he thinks a tailor might consider a client; as if measuring him to see which story would fit him best. After a moment his grin grows wider, and he laughs.

"I remember this one time," He begins, and Philip listens with rapt attention, joining the laughter as Laurens grows more and more animated, losing himself in stories of Alexander. Philips finds himself lost too; provided not only with a new side of his father, but a new friend in the man his father had once loved.

The man he possibly still did.

There seems no end to Laurens' stories, but there are times when he pauses, and in those pauses Philip finds himself telling stories of his own. Laurens is as enthusiastic a listener as he is a teller, and he draws tale after tale out of the younger man as Philip builds him a picture of all that he's missed. A picture not only of Alexander, but of Philip himself, and it seems no time at all before Philip is calling the man he once mistook for an angel _pops_.

And when, later, Alexander himself wakes, there's two men waiting in the sky for him.


End file.
